A fresh opinion poll showed Australia's bare-knuckle election campaign tightening significantly but the centre-left opposition Labor party maintaining a narrow lead ahead of a first televised leaders' debate Monday.

Australia's prime minister on Thursday called a national election for May 18, firing the starting gun on what promises to be a bareknuckle campaign focused heavily on climate and the economy.

An Australian teenager lauded worldwide for egging a far-right senator who made offensive comments about the Christchurch mosque attacks was let off with a police caution for the incident Tuesday.

Australia continued a string of "hottest ever" months in March, the government said Monday, as global warming emerges as the hot button issue in national elections just weeks away.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said the country had experienced the warmest March on record, with mean maximum and minimum temperatures above average for nearly all of the vast continent nation.

Australia pledged Saturday to introduce new laws that could see social media executives jailed and tech giants fined billions for failing to remove extremist material from their platforms.

The tough new legislation will be brought to parliament next week as Canberra pushes for social media companies to prevent their platforms from being "weaponised" by terrorists in the wake of the Christchurch mosque attacks.

Australia warned social media giants Tuesday that executives could be jailed if they fail to quickly remove extremist material from their platforms.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison met with a number of tech firms Tuesday -- including Facebook, Twitter and Google -- to ask how they planned to keep their platforms from being "weaponised" by terrorists, as Canberra considers new laws in the wake of the New Zealand massacre.

A "very destructive" category 4 cyclone slammed into Australia's remote northern coast on Saturday, while a second, equally powerful storm bore down on the country's west.

Cyclone Trevor, pushing a big storm tide and packing winds of up to 250 kilometres per hour (150 mph), made landfall on the sparsely populated Northern Territory coast near the Gulf of Carpentaria town of Port McArthur, the Bureau of Meteorology reported.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday announced more funding to defend religious establishments against potential attack in the wake of the mosque massacres in neighbouring New Zealand.

Cyclone Oma intensified to a damaging category three storm, Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said Wednesday, warning that it could bring severe weather to the continent after hitting the Pacific Islands.

Australia formally signed a Aus$50 billion "strategic partnership" with France to build 12 state of the art submarines Monday, a signal of Canberra's willingness to project power across the Pacific.